What do you think of "Time served" grades for 2nd Dan or 3rd Dan for people who "don't have the time" to prepare for their test! although double time served is required ie for 2nd Dan you'd have to wait 4 years and 3rd dan would be 6 years. I personally only feel that medical conditions should be the only reason for this.

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A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.

hope - the thing with tests is they only really evaluate how good a person is at taking tests. It's a test-specific kind of stress, not a realistic kind of stress. If you want to test a person's skills under stress you should jump out at them from behind a corner and gauge their response .

I'm more inclined to agree with Dereck that everyday in class should be a test. If one has demonstrated regularly in class that they deserve to move forward, just present the new belt to them at the end of class. People will also work harder in each individual class because day to day performance matters more in this kind of setting compared to when advancement depends on a finite test in time.

What do you think of "Time served" grades for 2nd Dan or 3rd Dan for people who "don't have the time" to prepare for their test! although double time served is required ie for 2nd Dan you'd have to wait 4 years and 3rd dan would be 6 years. I personally only feel that medical conditions should be the only reason for this.

Dan grades are already essentially time-served grades. The problem with performance testing at the black belt level is that at a certain point being a black belt isn't about performance, but about wisdom and experience.

I don't totally buy into the "dan grades are time served grades." One needs to progress in technique along with wisdom and experience. There are physical limitations that age places on the body, but being in general good health one needs to work hard just like the kyus. This actually hits a little nerve with me. I know that my approach in training for nidan wasn't even close to what it was for shodan.I could see it as I wasn't pushing my self as hard as I could have.I was young enough that I should have kept up the intensity of my training.My fault, and since starting up in another art have I'm careful to not cheat myself in my training. It also is great that I have a sensei that tests his students when he thinks they are ready.There isn't any time table.

hope - the thing with tests is they only really evaluate how good a person is at taking tests. It's a test-specific kind of stress, not a realistic kind of stress. If you want to test a person's skills under stress you should jump out at them from behind a corner and gauge their response .

Jumping out at someone from behind a corner is certainly a different kind of stress than taking a test. However, to say that testing creates a kind of unique "test-specific" stress which is totally useless outside a test isn't actually true. The stresses you are under in testing can be multiple (depending on the setup of the test): time pressure, fear of failure, fear of public judgment, competitive stress. Being able to demonstrate that you have automated sth to such an extent that you can be competent under these types of stress is valuable.

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God grant me a good sword and no use for it. -- Polish proverb

There is also the personal preference side of this issue. When I was first advised to try for a black belt, I went along with it, believing I did not have sufficient skill to earn it. I was granted it.

Later I was told that I could have been awarded Nidan if I had asked for it. My opinion was that I would not have accepted it because I felt I needed the time as Shodan for the experience.

I'm testing for my next belt in a couple of weeks.I'm beyond the time requirement for my present rank, and the owner of my school actually apologized to me for making me wait.His reason for that is he wanted to test some other students along with me, and he wanted to make sure that they were ready.He also stated that he is confident that I know the techniques and forms for my present rank because he's seen me work them time and time again in classes, and that he feels that I need to move up in order for me to be challenged.I told him that I wasn't concerned about going over the required time period because the training that I'm doing is still good training, and besides that, the other instructors have been making me work techniques (not forms) that are beyond my belt level anyway.Also, he allowed me to skip a belt earlier on because he felt that I was beyond that level, and he didn't want to hold me back and take the risk that I would become stagnant.

hope - the thing with tests is they only really evaluate how good a person is at taking tests. It's a test-specific kind of stress, not a realistic kind of stress. If you want to test a person's skills under stress you should jump out at them from behind a corner and gauge their response .

I'm more inclined to agree with Dereck that everyday in class should be a test. If one has demonstrated regularly in class that they deserve to move forward, just present the new belt to them at the end of class. People will also work harder in each individual class because day to day performance matters more in this kind of setting compared to when advancement depends on a finite test in time.

Christie is understanding better of what I was getting at.

Yes testing puts stress on a student HOWEVER when it comes to testing there are only "certain" requirements the student has to fill in order to pass on. What is happening is students will become "capable" of doing just those things in order to grade and to move on. What I'm saying is as a student you become good at "everything". Your over all performance in far more under scrutiny every day and at the end of the day you are rewarded for that.

In class I was tested continually out of the blue, put on the spot in front of everybody; don't see that any different then testing for a grade. I was pushed at every turn. If my Instructor felt I wasn't putting my all into it he'd point it out. One such incident I was bagged. I had weight lifted prior to class and at the end we had to do 100 kicks per leg on the heavy back. I was sucking wind. I was behind everybody. My Instructor said, "Dereck, did you want somebody else to finish those for you?" That was motivation enough to make me suck it up and get it done. I was put on the spot in front of everybody and he knew that would push me and he knew I could do it ... I just didn't believe it. A good Instructor will continually test you in class; push you beyond what you think you can do. Take you out of your comfort zone. At times during training I felt genuine fear, greater than any test could have done. Testing didn't make me better, training made me better. As an A/Cst. with the RCMP I've had to use some of those skills, testing didn't help me during these situations, training over and over made those techniques flow. The stress of training and being pushed was the deciding factor. That is the real truth.

If students know that their everyday performance in all skills will move them forward they will work harder in class. Put testing parameters with time required as the deciding factor than most will just work towards that. In the end you will have substandard martial artists. That is what we as a martial arts society are seeing. I was stuck in that earlier on; I got off that ride.

_________________________"IF I COME ... I'M BRINGING THE PAIN WITH ME"

hope - the thing with tests is they only really evaluate how good a person is at taking tests. It's a test-specific kind of stress, not a realistic kind of stress. If you want to test a person's skills under stress you should jump out at them from behind a corner and gauge their response .

Jumping out at someone from behind a corner is certainly a different kind of stress than taking a test. However, to say that testing creates a kind of unique "test-specific" stress which is totally useless outside a test isn't actually true. The stresses you are under in testing can be multiple (depending on the setup of the test): time pressure, fear of failure, fear of public judgment, competitive stress. Being able to demonstrate that you have automated sth to such an extent that you can be competent under these types of stress is valuable.

Performance under the stress of taking an examination does not transfer to performance under stress in the real world. Lots of literature in psychology research confirms this if you do a quick search on Google scholar.

If students know that their everyday performance in all skills will move them forward they will work harder in class. Put testing parameters with time required as the deciding factor than most will just work towards that. In the end you will have substandard martial artists. That is what we as a martial arts society are seeing.

My thoughts exactly. The kind of dogmatism we see in most martial arts instructors these days is really detrimental to the quality of the art as whole. It's a sign of a bad teacher. If one needs to dogmatically stick to some time-constrained rubric, than one does not have enough confidence in one's own judgement and consequently has no business teaching.